How Many Afghan Civilians...

..must we kill before someone in the Pentagon figures out wholesale slaughter (whether well-intentioned or not) of residents in the wrong place at the wrong time does not move you toward an objective that is political in its primary nature.

I guess "how many" is a lot more than 100.

The too often quoted Von Clausewitz said it pretty well:

"If war is part of policy, policy will determine its character. As policy becomes more ambitious and vigorous, so will war, and this may reach the point where war attains its absolute form. . . . Policy is the guiding intelligence and war only the instrument, not vice versa."

He must be too quaint to be taught in general School anymore.

Working in London on the early 1990s was rarely privileged as an American to have enjoyed the benefits of liberation you can only get from a bombing campaign. The London Bridge Station bombing, injured 28 people in a men's room I used probably half the time. On that morning, I was working in the suburban office, so the emerald Butchers missed me. If it was on the previous day, I might have become an embarrassing international incident, as well as an amputee.

Although I have always sympathised with the issues the IRA claims to address, this experience taught me an important lesson. I cannot support anyone whose actions are intended to kill me or my neighbors by using explosives and putting me in the "collateral damage lottery". Although you don't have to to have the Betazoid empathy of Commander Troi ti figure this out, it appears neither our President nor his minion of generals have that ability. Our military forces are doomed to failure until these folks figure out that this is not a good way to make friends. The certainly forthcoming military investigation and resulting pronouncement that it's OK to bomb a village when you see a stolen vehicle will be certain to increase the damage.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.